Saturday, 14 April 2018

Shenmue I & II Announcement.

So Sega have announced the upcoming release of Shenmue I & II for Xbox One, PS4 and PC, with a an expected 2018 release. Whilst not a full "from the ground up" remaster, Sega have implemented a few new things to keep the series fresh, and keep us going until the release of Shenmue III.

In Shenmue, you play as a character called Ryo Hazuki, a young martial artist seeking revenge for the murder of his father. It was released back in 1999/2000 for Sega Dreamcast, and while the sequel eventually received an Xbox release, this marks the first time that people can play the full series on a non-Dreamcast console. We've still got a Dreamcast, but sadly no longer have our original copies of Shenmue or Shenmue II, and Allan had been desperate to replay them before III comes out, so we're so glad that this is coming out.

Releasing as an all in one package, this will be the perfect chance for players old and new to work their way through both titles before Shenmue III is released. The slight changes incorporated are an updated user interface (UI), the ability to switch between modern and classic control schemes, scalable screen resolutions as well as being able to choose between English or Japanese voiceovers for the characters.

The Shenmue I & II collection will be available both digitally, and in physical form, which we're really happy about. Currently we don't have an official release date locked down, but with Shenmue III expected to drop in Q3/Q4 of this year, it will need to be fairly soon in order to give people time to complete before then.

Allan is a massive fan of Shenmue, and has been dreaming of a current-gen re-release for years. With the announcement (and Kickstarter) of Shenmue III, he really hoped we'd see this happen, so he's over the moon that it is finally confirmed. Definitely think we're going to have to organise a space on a shelf for Shenmue stuff, as currently our Ryo Hazuki Exclusive statue from First4Figures is just on our Dreamcast shelf, but with the Shenmue III Kickstarter rewards for the tier we backed, Shenmue definitely deserves a shelf of its own.

I expect we will hear more details at E3 regarding both this and the release of Shenmue III - I am betting that they'll show this at E3 and do the whole "available now!" shtick, and then confirm a December release date for III, giving everyone a few months to fire through these, or they'll give us a date for this and announce a delay on III.

During the 2015 Kickstarter, we pledged for the $600 tier:

Which includes:

- "Put your name and a 140 character message in the guestbook
of a Choubu Inn. Write your witticism/aphorism/Shenmue-ism for all to see!"

We haven't yet decided what we want in the guestbook, but surveys haven't been done yet anyway, so no worries on that!